Lung Health News, Fall 2005 / Winter 2006
On any given day, school nurse Marilyn Sweitzer, RN, sees the effects of an epidemic that threatens the ability of children to learn and ultimately succeed. She is a modern-day crusader against a disease called asthma.
“Our responsibility is to help these kids manage their asthma so we can keep them in school,” says Sweitzer, who is assigned to three schools in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, the sixth largest school district in California in one of the top 25 most polluted counties in the nation. “Asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism.”
Funded through a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente, the school district is one of eight across the country selected to pilot the American Lung Association’s Asthma-Friendly Schools Initiative. Launched in 2001, the initiative brings together health advocates and school officials in an effort to make schools more asthma-friendly places by reducing environmental factors that trigger asthma and educating school personnel, parents and children about the lung disease that affects nearly 1 million children in California.
“I heard one horror story a while back about a student having an asthma attack who went to the office and was told ‘Nobody is here to help you right now. Come back later,’” Sweitzer says. “Asthma is a big problem now and there is a definite need for school staff to be trained so everyone can help someone who is having an asthma attack.”
Working with the American Lung Association of the Inland Counties and the San Bernardino Asthma Coalition, a committee was formed in 2004 to implement the two-year pilot project.The first step was to conduct a needs assessment, which included looking at the schools’ indoor air quality policies, asthma education programs, and medical resources available as well as gathering an Asthma Action Plan for each student with asthma.
PREVENTION IS KEY
“We have to prevent asthma attacks so we don’t have children coming into the office wheezing and getting us ready to call 911,” says Sweitzer, who has been teaching the American Lung Association’s Open Airways For Schools asthma management program for eight years. “If we can do a better job at prevention, we’ll spend less on treatment.”
Both the Asthma-Friendly Schools Initiative and the Open Airways program focus on prevention and education.There is no cure for asthma, but it can be controlled with medication and by reducing exposure to triggers that cause the airways to become irritated such as secondhand smoke, dust, animal dander, mold, pollen, pesticides, and air pollution.
Sweitzer is a strong supporter of the Open Airways program because she has seen the difference it makes in kids’ lives.
“Asthma is scary for them,” she says. “But Open Airways helps them understand what’s happening. We teach them about their lungs, how to use their inhalers so the medicine gets into their lungs and works. Proper management so drastically improves quality of life.We owe it to these kids.”
